


Moses among the Bulrushes

by toujours_nigel



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Character of Color, Childhood, Chromatic Character, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-30
Updated: 2010-06-30
Packaged: 2017-10-10 08:06:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/97495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lily Evans ran away to marry James Potter. Petunia kept this as much a secret as she could because James Potter was black. A reimaging of sorts of the beginning of the Harry Potter series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moses among the Bulrushes

A long-fingered hand, spotted with age, set a basket down on the feverishly-scrubbed front-step of the Dursleys of Number 4, Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey. It was a suspiciously capacious basket, and the smiling old man and severe woman who wandered off the street would have been eyed with suspicion and disapproval by the inhabitants of Privet Drive, had they chanced to look out from behind the lace-curtained windows of the exquisitely-maintained houses in their manicured lawns—they would also have seen the woman coil down into a severe-looking tabby, and jump up to curl around the old man’s neck; any of them who did not faint at this juncture would also have seen the old man in his flowing robes, and the woman/cat, knock at the door of Mrs. Figg’s house and be cordially invited in. Since this would have irrevocably damaged what tentative relations they had with Mrs. Figg, perhaps it was for the best that there were no witnesses to this incident.

 

When people had begun stirring behind the polished doors and brass knobs of the houses of Privet Drive, Mrs. Petunia Dursley of Number 4 opened her door just enough to poke her head out—she had been peering out to check on the milkman’s progress, and had caught sight of the basket. It was a very large basket, large enough to comfortably contain provisions for a very large picnic, a litter of puppies, or, as the case might be, a baby of a year’s growth, or thereabouts. It was an open basket, the sort narratives often place abandoned to-be heroes in—think of Moses, and, if you know of him, think of Karna—and Mrs. Dursley did not have to do anything quite so strenuous as lifting the basket lid. That this was so was fortunate for the child in the basket, since she would almost certainly have slammed it down on his face, squashing his button-nose further, and adding the imprint of woven wicker-work to the lightning-shaped scar already livid against his skin. As it was, she retreated precipitately, walking backwards through the door with her hand clenched in a fist against her mouth, eyes wide in panic and fixed on the basket, as though the baby inside would suddenly stop chuckling and scream loud enough to attract the attention of the neighbours—what would we do, if the Jones’ disapproved?

 

In she went, and slammed the door, and took up station beside the window nearest the door, peering anxiously through the curtains to see whether any of the neighbours had already noticed. Five minutes later, and just in time, she remembered the milkman, and shot straight out to intercept him, and steered him neatly past her door, talking volubly over his confused complaints. She came back and stared for a long moment at the basket, taking care to guard it from view with her body, very grateful that she had not shed her dressing-gown as yet. The child laughed at her, waving his arms as though to be picked up—most adults picked him up, and he really wanted his mommy, and this lady looked vaguely similar in general shape and colour. Mrs. Dursley, however, recoiled—to be caught holding that child would mean facing an interrogation, and possible defamation. Besides, she felt no urge to pick up the child, no matter how winningly he smiled, or, really, anything beyond a creeping sense of dread that everyone would know that her sister had run away and married that rascally, good-for-nothing Potter. There was a letter in the basket, nearly hidden under the child, displaced by his many turnings—he’d been out for two hours, by then, and his smile had faded a little; he was hungry—and she wondered whether to pick it up, but decided against it—she didn’t want to do anything at all that might cause the boy to cry, after all. Instead, she simply nudged the basket with her foot till it was hidden safely behind the fence and went back into her house to resume surveillance.

 

A little while later, two of Mrs. Figg’s cats came nosing down the street, sniffed interestedly at the basket, and wandered off. They returned accompanied by Mrs. Figg, and a third cat, an unfamiliar tabby with square marking around her eyes, who watched anxiously while Mrs. Figg picked up the basket carefully, almost reverently, and stroked a finger gently over the child’s cheek. The boy—Harry Potter, let’s simply call him that, all this ‘the child’ is beginning to get tiresome—tried to catch at it, then gave up and curled into himself to sleep. The little cavalcade proceeded to Mrs. Figg’s house, where, an hour or so later, a meeting was called whose participants would have shocked the inhabitants of Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey, just as much as the old man and woman who walked down its length earlier in the day. They discussed Harry’s future at some length, and in the end, after considering several claims and claimants, decided to bestow him upon Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, already the parents of several children, who would be sure to treat as one of their own, and pay no heed to his status as the Boy Who Lived. A bookish young man named Remus Lupin found himself rather disappointed, but took it with good grace—he had several disappointments in his life, many of them worse—and was greatly mollified when informed he could visit Harry whenever he chose to.

 

Mrs. Petunia Dursley of Number 4, Privet Drive, remained in extreme ill humour for many days, and snapped often and at great length at her husband, and, once, even almost scolded her darling Dudleykins for accidentally uprooting her toenail by running it over with a toy-car, though she restrained herself in the very nick of time—early childhood experiences were so formative, and she couldn’t bear to scar her Diddydums. It took her a little more than a week to stop starting at every sound that sounded as though it could be the sound of a basket being put gently down on her doorstep, and rather longer to stop waking up in a old sweat, sure that all her neighbours knew and were discussing it behind her back, but she eventually came to accept the fact that nobody knew her secret shame that her little sister had run away to marry a negro.


End file.
